Epilogue
by prolixdreams
Summary: Set after... everything. Dean is alone, still fighting the good fight. Will he ever get to rest? One-shot. [Inspired by the song Lazarus, by Porcupine Tree.] [Contains Destiel]


"This is Special Agent Rossington, FBI - Minneapolis branch office. To whom am I speaking?" He was curt, but polite enough.

"Detective Joanna Nevers speaking, Saint Cloud PD." A gruff woman's voice came through the earpiece of the phone. "I've got a guy here, says you sent him out to investigate a string of recent deaths, I'm just calling to confirm, did you put an agent in the field over here?"

"Affirmative, Detective."

"And can I just get a name and badge number on that agent?" She asked.

"That'd be Agent Collins, 23044. You got the right man?"

"Yes, sir, thank you sir."

"He's a good kid, I'd appreciate if you'd cooperate with him, you hear me? Would you mind putting him on the horn a minute?"

"No problem, sir." The policewoman's crisp uniform rustled as she passed the phone to the young man with the long nose leaning on her squad car. "He wants to talk to you."

"Sir, what can I do for you?" The agent asked, casually taking several steps away before whispering into the receiver, "You got anything on it?"

"Yeah." He said, tone shifting immediately away from firm and professional. "You got yourself an angiak. You know how to gank it? Your grandpa's book should have something about it, let me know if it doesn't and I'll see what I got."

"In Minnesota?"

"It ain't too uh... too far south..." The old man trailed off. Something had distracted him.

"Uncle Dean, are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, kid-er-Rob." He corrected himself. "I'm fine. I just thought I heard something, is all." Dean said.

"Y'know, dad told me you didn't like to talk about your feelings, but if he were around, he'd want me to take care of you. You gotta tell me if something's wrong."

"I don't need some punk taking care of me. I'm s'posed to be taking care of you, ain't I?" The sound of a _click-hiss _over the phone indicated that he was opening a beer.

"I'm 34. You don't need- Are you drinking? It's 9:30 AM."

"Are you telling me when I can have a beer?"

"Did you have the dream again?" Rob asked, concern evident in his tone. "About the angel?"

"He had a name." Irritation crept into Dean's words.

"Castiel. Did you dream about Castiel?"

Dean was silent.

"Uncle, he's been gone for years. You have to-"

"Move on? Let me tell you something." The sound darkened, age and loneliness sitting heavy in his mouth. "I hope you meet someone like him someday. Someone you can't get over when they're gone. Someone you would never _want_ to get over, even if you could." His voice cracked a little at the end.

"I wasn't going to tell you to get over him." Rob said quietly. He had known great loss already, a curse of his family business. "Was it the same dream?"

"A little different this time." Dean confessed, but brushed over the true content of the dream. "How long you think this job's gonna take? I want to go for a drive."

"There's gotta be forty cars in that lot. Maybe three or four of them could even make it to the street." He joked.

"I want to drive my baby. Just 'cause your dad wanted me to let you use it don't mean I don't get to drive it. You're keeping her up good, right?"

"What about your eyes? And yeah, though I gotta say, parts that old are getting pretty expensive these days."

"You can come and babysit me in the car if you want. In case I go senile and forget how to drive." Dean grunted. He never missed an opportunity to make a crack about his age. It was the only good way to hide his real discomfort with it.

"I'm pretty busy over here."

"Your father would come."

A heavy sigh hissed through the earpiece. "Fine. I'll be there tomorrow."

* * *

The Impala's horn honked in the driveway, and Dean mused on what a beautiful sound it was. It wasn't some kiddy beep, some little airy mechanical whine like most cars had nowadays. It was full, rich, it stood out on any street and declared its presence with confidence.

Normally, he'd be out there as fast as he could manage, but this time was different. He looked around, taking in the house he built on the ruins of the one that had once stood at Singer Salvage Yard. It was smaller than Bobby's had been, less grand, but no less cluttered by now.

Dean stood at his desk and looked through the window onto the gravel lot. He turned his eyes down to the wood surface and picked up a simple photoframe - he wasn't really the framing type, but this one was special. Shit, he looked so young, Sam's hair looked ridiculous, and Bobby, god love him, was in that stupid wheelchair. He felt a heat build behind his eyes when his gaze shifted to the far left of the shot to that face - eyebrows furrowed, mouth a stiff line, hands loosely curled at the sides of a tan trenchcoat two sizes too big.

Cas.

Dean swallowed hard.

What came to him wasn't so much a memory, but a flashback. He was there again, stumbling over the debris in the wreckage of the factory floor, shouting his name again and again, until he finally got a visual: Cas was on the ground, body twisted at unnatural angles, broken.

Around him, enormous wings were burned into the wood, their tips nearly touching both distant walls.

Dean had been too late.

He had screamed, and swore, knowing it was over, feeling the beginning of an avalanche of guilt that would never end, not for a moment, not for as long as he lived. He knelt at Cas' side. His eyes were still open, still blue, still beautiful. Dean closed them and cradled Cas' lifeless head, running his hands through the dark wires of his hair. He bent down and pressed his cheek to Cas' still-warm face, letting the sobs come and beat against him. He stayed there until the sun rose, and all alone, he gave Cas a hunter's funeral.

"Uncle?" Rob's voice was soft, stirring Dean from his remembrance. "You called me up here to take a drive, I'm here."

"You're earlier than I thought." Dean said, never turning. "Have a beer. I'm not ready yet."

Another impatient sigh escaped Rob, who pulled his phone out of the pocket of his wool coat and typed into it.

"How long have you been hunting, Rob?"

"Well neither of you would teach me how to shoot until I was almost eighteen but it's not like I was exactly ignorant before that."

"We tried to keep you out of it."

"Great job." Rob scoffed.

"No one wanted any of that to happen." Dean said. He turned to face his nephew. "No one thought... You know it wasn't your fault."

"It's been fifteen years. You can stop telling me that." Rob almost growled. "Can we just go?"

"No, it's important you know. You remember what I told you?"

He recited impatiently, "That dad was ready, that he was happy, that he saw grandma, all that fluffy blah blah blah, but he was still only in that situation in the first place because of me, because I let myself get in trouble."

"You sound like him. It was because we didn't teach you. It wasn't your fault. And it's true. It's all true. I couldn't have..." Dean choked on his words. "If I had to decide how your daddy- how Sammy was going to die, I couldn't have come up with something better. I wish he was still around too, but_ he _was happy. That's what matters. You understand?" He remembered Sammy, his stupid little smile, his wife holding his hand. Dean wasn't nice to her after, he was selfish, unhelpful, and it was a regret he never forgot. No amount of apologies ever really seemed to quite make up for it.

"Why are we treading old ground?" Rob sounded almost like he'd been struck.

"I just thought you should know." Dean said. He looked back out the window.

"Can we go now?"

"Was I ever that much of an impatient snot?"

Rob managed a laugh. He stood next to his uncle, looked at the wear and tear on his face, wondered what he'd look like, if he'd still be hunting, if he'd even live that long. Sixty-seven was ancient for a hunter, especially one with his uncle's kind of life. Dean himself would have projected forty, at best. But he just kept going. Rob thought he looked tired.

The sun started to touch the horizon on its way down when Dean turned to Rob and gave him a nod. "Let's roll." He said, putting on his coat with an unexpected spryness.

Dean got into the driver's seat and made all of his little adjustments. As he pulled out of the lot, he tilted the rear view mirror until it showed the house. He smiled.

* * *

"Are you sure you know where you're going?" Rob asked, though he had to admit, he was surprised at how well Dean handled the old car. "GPS is a thing, you know, you don't have to remember everything perfectly."

"You shut your cake hole." Dean said, almost sounding young again. "I don't need you going telling me anything on your GPS, I know where I'm going."

"It's just, we're kind of in the middle of nowhere, and we've been in the middle of nowhere for almost an hour."

"We're almost there, so shut up."

Dean pulled onto a dirt road lined with trees that leaned gently over the car. Where he stopped seemed almost random to Rob, though it was clear that Dean had been extremely deliberate.

"You stay with the car." He said.

"And where are you going?"

"Not far." Dean considered that it might be a lie. He added: "Be good, OK?"

Rob wasn't sure what that meant.

He got out, leaving the engine running, listening to the purr as he walked away.

The wide field led down a shallow hill into something of a small valley. At the bottom, Dean stood in the brisk spring air, dew washing his boots. Rob could just see him from the Impala's passenger seat.

The moon was full, as big as Dean had ever seen it, so bright it washed out some of he stars even on a perfectly clear night. It hung just above the tree-line and spilled pale light into the grass.

"Hello, Dean."

Dean turned around inches away and licked his lip, trying to steady it from shaking, breathing the damp air so quick he was nearly hyperventilating. Cas was incredible. The moon painted his face fair and smooth, as perfect as the day Dean had first seen him, seeming almost to glow in the reflection. Even in the night, his eyes shone like bright blue stars burning a thousand light-years away.

What really took him by surprise, though, was the wings. Vast and dark, hanging out the back of the old tan trenchcoat, they didn't reflect the moonlight at all - their blackness was so thick they were like two great feathery holes in the world.

"It's you." He whispered.

"It's me."

"How come you're... what happens to Angels?"

"Normally? I don't know." Cas said honestly. "I suppose that from the long-term perspective, we can say that Metatron may have done me a favor. It seems that spending some time as human changes the outcome somehow. I appear to have a soul."

He couldn't restrain himself, and even if he could, he didn't want to - he threw his arms around Cas' neck and shoulder. "I can't believe I feel like thanking that asshole." He laughed through the tears he hardly noticed coming down his cheeks.

Cas withdrew. He raised a hand to Dean's chin, slid his fingers up his cheek, and pulled his face in, pressing his lips tenderly against Dean's. "I'm sorry you had to wait so long."

Dean sighed like letting out a breath he didn't even know he had been holding. "And Sammy? And Rob's mom?"

"Soon." Cas' mouth quirked up at the sides.

Dean nodded.

"You did well." Cas said. "You should be proud."

"But I-"

Cas touched one fair fingertip to Dean's lips. He knew that Dean would think only of his failings. "I have seen so much of humanity, Dean Winchester. Do not doubt me when I tell you that you _should_ be proud. Why do you think I was allowed to come instead of..."

"A reaper." Dean whispered.

"Death himself, actually." A low laugh escaped Cas' mouth. "He told me that while he wished to speak with you, he felt it only proper to invite me to come for you. To carry you home."

"Home..." Dean repeated under his breath. "I can still do more-" Dean swallowed. "I can't just leave them."

"It is not time for you to worry or to work. The things you've lived through, and to want to do more still." He chuckled once more, the sound like a melody from deep inside the Earth. "I would expect no less of you, but you've seen more than enough. " He brushed the side of Dean's face, taking in the exhaustion in Dean's deep green eyes, seeing beyond them, to the fire of his soul. "Perhaps too much. Perhaps it's past time for you to rest."

Cas took a step forward past Dean, and turning back, stretched out his hand.

Dean took it, Cas' fingers warming his own, and together, they walked.


End file.
